The 4D Template

Fill this in per project, before you unleash the agents. This is the Google Doc / fillable PDF spec your owners actually use to hold themselves accountable. Free tier — no gate. Pair it with the diagnostic to know which projects to write a contract for first.

What this document is

A one-page contract the project owner completes at kickoff. Four fields, one per D. Pin it to the top of the project channel. When anything goes sideways, the team reads the contract, not the meeting notes.

Every field is deterministic — no room for hedging. If a field is vague at kickoff, the owner isn't ready to start.

Suggested doc name

4D Contract — {{Project name}} — {{Owner name}} — {{QuarterYear}}

Example: 4D Contract — Q3 Lead Magnet #4 — J.J. Owens — Q3 2026

Field 1 — Delegation

Prompt. For each step of this project, name the actor.

Rule. Every step gets an actor. "TBD" is not an actor. If you can't name the actor at kickoff, break the step down further until you can.

Test. More than half your steps should be Agent. If more than half are Human, you're doing manual work an agent could parallelize. Rebuild the bench.

Field 2 — Description

Prompt. In one paragraph, describe the definition of done.

Not a project brief. Not a wishlist. A definition. Something the owner can hold up next to v1 and say either "yes, this matches" or "no, this doesn't yet." Ambiguity here is the single largest cause of scope creep downstream.

Definition of done for this project:

(one paragraph, 60–120 words)

Rule. If a stakeholder challenges v1 with "but I thought we were also going to…," the owner replies with this paragraph. If the paragraph doesn't cover it, the stakeholder is scope-creeping and the answer is either (a) not this project or (b) a formally re-signed 4D Contract.

Field 3 — Discernment

Prompt. Who judges whether the output hits the bar?

Primary judge: (one named human — usually the owner)

Secondary judge (only if primary genuinely lacks the taste): (one named human — never a group)

How the judge decides: (one sentence — e.g., "matches the reference-set of three shipped examples," or "hits the accepted-metric threshold of X")

Rule. Discernment always lives with one human. Never a committee. If the owner is not the judge, the owner must name a specific individual whose judgment they defer to, and that person is on the hook for the call. Groups do not discern; they average.

Field 4 — Diligence

Prompt. What is the pre-ship checklist for accuracy, bias, edge cases, and — critically — security and data protection?

Three-to-seven bullets. Specific to this project. The owner runs it. The owner cannot delegate the checklist to the agents or the committee. In the agent era, the security and data-protection items are non-negotiable and belong on every contract.

• (item 1)
• (item 2)
• (item 3)
• (item 4)
• (item 5)
• (item 6)
• (item 7)

Rule. Every item is something the owner personally verifies before shipping. If an item can be verified by an agent, add "verified by agent + spot-checked by owner." Diligence is the owner's non-negotiable.

Common items to consider:

• Names and dollar figures cross-checked against source
• Claims cross-checked against evidence
• Legal or compliance flag reviewed
• Accessibility check
• Analytics event fires confirmed
• Rollback plan documented
• Owner's own gut check: "would I be embarrassed if a customer saw this?"

Security & data protection (non-negotiable — put at least two on every contract):

• Least privilege — the agents had access only to the data and systems the job required, nothing more
• No leakage — no customer PII, secrets, API keys, or credentials in prompts, logs, or outputs
• No new attack surface — nothing an agent produced opens a prompt-injection or data-exfiltration path into production; external/agent output is sanitized before it touches live systems
• Compliance & retention — data handled per your privacy and retention policy (GDPR / CCPA / SOC 2 as they apply to you); anything sensitive stays out of third-party tools you don't control

Kickoff signature

Owner: __________________________ Date: __________

Sponsor (usually CEO or COO): __________________________ Date: __________

By signing, the owner accepts end-to-end responsibility for delegation, description, discernment, and diligence on this project. By signing, the sponsor accepts that this project will proceed under the Collaboration Contract model — waypoints, not meetings; end-of-deliverable review, not per-step approvals.

Change log

• 1.0 — 2026-07-09 — Initial template. Four fields, one page. Signature block.